Here is a list of WKU cancellations/closings for Wednesday, Feb. 10 (check back for any updates):
Update: Today’s earthquake drill and test of WKU’s emergency communications systems has been canceled.
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On Wednesday, Feb. 10, WKU will participate in a test of its emergency communication systems as a part of the statewide earthquake drill. This will take place at 9 a.m. Warren County will active the Community Outdoor Warning Sirens (COWS). WKU will also activate its outdoor warning system and will test its text alert and email alert systems. Information will also be posted on the WKU website, WKU News Blog and the WKUNews Facebook page.
If you would like information on earthquake preparedness, visit Environment, Health and Safety at http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Support/Legal/EHS/training/earthquake.htm or Warren County Emergency Management at http://www.wcem.org/.
If you would like more information about emergency communications at WKU, visit http://www.wku.edu/emergency-info/.
You can find President Gary Ransdell on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GaryRansdell
WKU President Gary Ransdell has joined the popular social media site Facebook.
Dr. Ransdell’s page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/GaryRansdell
“Facebook provides an opportunity for me to connect on a new level with WKU students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends,” Dr. Ransdell said. “I’m excited about utilizing social media to highlight campus activities and WKU achievements, and I am enjoying the interaction with my ‘new friends.’ ”
Contact: Public Affairs, (270) 745-5428.
Students at Cumberland Trace Elementary School are learning math using a comic book created by Dr. Bruce Kessler, a mathematics faculty member and assistant dean of WKU’s Ogden College of Science and Engineering. Find out more in this View from the Hill segment by WKU’s Amy Bingham DeCesare.
WKU photographer Clinton Lewis captured the following images of a snowy WKU campus on the morning of Feb. 9:
Here is a list of WKU cancellations/closings for Tuesday, Feb. 9 (check back for any updates):
WKU honored its award-winning photojournalism program with a reception and exhibit opening on Feb. 6 at the Mass Media and Technology Hall Gallery. WKU has won the Hearst Journalism Award Program’s Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition 17 times in the past 20 years. WKU students have won nine Hearst individual photojournalism titles (’87, ’88, ’91, ’92, ’96, ’04, ’05, ’06, ’08). The Hearst competition is considered the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism. Alumni of the photojournalism program have been members of numerous Pulitzer Prize winning projects, have won numerous other awards and have documented major news events around the world. (WKU photos by Clinton Lewis)
February is a time for us to focus on world regions which are sometimes overlooked as a place in which to study. WKU’s Study Abroad February Focus series allows students who have studied in these regions to come together with students who hope to go in the future.
When possible, faculty or staff with experience in these regions will be present to share their experience. Bring your photos, stories, and/or questions, and share and learn from others why each region has so much to offer.
Here is the schedule (all sessions will be held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Grise Hall, room 132):
•Feb. 8: Study Abroad in Africa
•Feb. 11: Study Abroad in Latin America
•Feb. 15: International Service-Learning
•Feb. 18: Study Abroad in the Middle East
It is not necessary to RSVP to this event, but you may contact Study Abroad Advisor Melinda Farmer at melinda.farmer@wku.edu with any questions.
WKU’s Study Abroad & Global Learning is committed to providing every WKU student the opportunity to add a global view to the lessons learned in the classroom. Available programs include WKU faculty-led, exchanges, consortia, affiliated and third-party providers, most found on the Study Abroad & Global Learning website. The program serves the WKU community by engaging students, faculty and staff in diverse, educational, and cultural experiences through faculty led, exchange, consortia and other study abroad opportunities.
Contact: Jerry Barnaby at (270) 745-5334, or email study.abroad@wku.edu
The Robert Penn Warren Center at WKU announces that the award jury has chosen Disseminal Chaucer: Rereading the Nun’s Priest’s Tale by Peter W. Travis of Dartmouth College for the 2009 Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism.
Peter W. Travis
The award will be presented at 3 p.m. April 16 in Cherry Hall 125 during the annual Robert Penn Warren Symposium.
Among 42 books submitted for this year’s contest, Travis’s book, nominated by the University of Notre Dame Press, was chosen for the breadth and depth of Dr. Travis’s scholarship, and the wit and originality of his writing, according to the jury.
Dr. Travis is the Henry Winkley Professor of Anglo-Saxon and English Language and Literature at Dartmouth. His primary interests are medieval literature and contemporary critical theory and he recently developed and taught a College Course on contemporary masculinities called “The Masculine Mystique.”
Disseminal Chaucer sees the Nun’s Priest’s tale as a kaleidoscopic parody of a broad range of medieval intellectual concerns – its theories of argument, its ways of reading stories, its treatment of its archive, its sexual politics, its understanding of metaphor, its ways of reflecting upon the political and social world. Travis captures the gusto, the canniness, the encyclopedic intelligence, and, most of all, the wicked restless energy of Chaucer.
One juror remarked that “to read Disseminating Chaucer is an exhilarating experience, as Travis goes about demonstrating by a series of close readings that the Tale is a parody of the generic expectations of a readerly sensibility too intent on finding unitary truth in any piece of literature it reads.”
Another juror argued that “with an equally impressive combination of theoretical sophistication and independence of mind, Travis gives us a Chaucer engaged with the questions of our own moment—particularly the debate over the problems and possibilities of literary representation.’’ Travis captures the debates about the nature of rhetoric and literature that went on in Chaucer’s world, noticing how often the medieval rhetoricians Chaucer both loved and mocked in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale argue in ways that closely resemble recent developments in literary theory, from Stanley Fish to Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida. Travis’s book is itself what he says of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, a text that celebrates “the kinetic spirit and visceral élan of the act of thinking itself.’’
The award is given in honor of Warren and Cleanth Brooks. It was established in 1994 by the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies. Each year it goes to an outstanding work of literary scholarship or criticism that exemplifies in the broadest sense the spirit, scope and standards represented by the critical tradition established by Warren and Brooks. It is intended to recognize and honor work that employs in a significant way the methods associated with a close reading of texts.
Contact: Wes Berry, (270) 745-5770.
On Feb. 27, WKU’s Chess Club will make the opening move in The MasterMind Conference, a four-workshop series designed for educators and community members interested in learning how to start-up, operate and sustain a successful scholastic chess club.
In addition to providing hands-on instruction in chess coaching, club organization and tournament management, the workshops will introduce chess as a potential cross-curricular tool to enhance learning of math, science and literacy.
This MasterMind Conference at WKU is designed for those who wish to expand academically-focused youth development opportunities in the community, understand intelligence and how to better cultivate it in children, develop students’ social and intellectual aptitude, analytical reasoning skills, attentiveness and self-confidence, and make a difference in children’s lives.
Workshop dates are Feb. 27, March 20, April 10 and May 22. All sessions will be from 9:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. at WKU’s Faculty House.
For information, including registration and workshop fees, click here or email hilltopperchess@live.com.
